Trump Asks for Urgent Declassification of Documents Pertaining to FBI’s Russia ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ Investigation
By OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
6:18 PM – Tuesday, March 25, 2025
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump took action by signing an executive order mandating the FBI to promptly declassify materials related to the 2016 Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which aimed to ascertain if any members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the election.
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Trump remarked that the press could now scrutinize information that had been previously kept from the public following this executive order. However, he expressed skepticism about whether many journalists would actually delve into the findings, as they might not align with the long-standing “Russian collusion” narrative propagated by leftist journalists and reporters.
“You probably won’t bother because you’re not going to like what you see,” Trump stated. “But this was total weaponization. It’s a disgrace. It should have never happened in this country. But now you’ll be able to see for yourselves. All declassified.”
The FBI initiated a counterintelligence investigation on July 31st, 2016, to explore whether Trump, who was then a presidential candidate, or his campaign staff was conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 electoral outcome. Internally, this investigation was referred to as “Crossfire Hurricane.”
Just days after the investigation commenced, on July 28th, former CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-President Barack Obama about a rumored scheme from one of Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisors to “depict Donald Trump negatively by conjuring up a scandal involving Russian interference.”
At that time, Clinton was the Democratic nominee but ultimately lost to Trump.
A pivotal document that triggered the investigation was the “Steele dossier,” which then-FBI Director James Comey presented to Trump in January 2017. This dossier included harsh and unverified allegations regarding Trump’s supposed cooperation with the Russian government.
The dossier was commissioned by Fusion GPS, which had hired former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele to compile it. Fusion GPS had also been contracted by Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 election cycle. It was later revealed that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton’s campaign financed the dossier through the law firm Perkins Coie.
Trump dismissed Comey in May 2017, shortly after Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel to take charge of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and ascertain whether the Trump campaign worked with Russia to alter the 2016 election. Concurrently, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence began its own investigation into the alleged collusion between Trump and Russia while Mueller continued his work.
By February 2018, Kash Patel, the present director of the FBI and former chief investigator for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, discovered numerous instances of unlawful government surveillance, including the unwarranted monitoring of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign advisor.
Patel contributed significantly to a document that Nunes released in February 2018, detailing how the FBI and DOJ surveilled Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Nunes and Patel disclosed that the anti-Trump dossier, funded by Democrats, was “a fundamental element” of the application to surveil Page.
Later, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe testified privately that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought” from the FISA court “without the Steele dossier information,” according to the documentation.
However, the FBI failed to disclose the dossier’s financial backer—Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 electoral rival—when requesting the FISA order.
The document indicated that Steele, who was an FBI informant, was ultimately terminated by the agency for what they deemed a serious infraction: “an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.”
The FBI and DOJ secured three FISA renewals and “one initial FISA warrant” against Page, as per the memo.
Under the Act, a FISA order on a U.S. citizen “must be reviewed” every ninety days. McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente all signed at least one FISA application for Page, while Comey signed three.
Despite intense criticism from Democrats, the memo ultimately proved to be accurate.
After reviewing the report, Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, confirmed that the dossier was indeed the foundation for the controversial FISA warrants issued against Page.
Meanwhile, in April 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded his investigation into a possible Trump-Russia conspiracy, finding no illegal cooperation or conspiracy between Trump and Russia throughout the comprehensive investigation.
However, organizations like the American Constitution Society (ACS), a progressive legal group, still argue that “Russian interference in the 2016 election was both extensive and systematic,” as ostensibly substantiated by Mueller’s report. Nonetheless, the ACS acknowledges that “Mueller declined to exonerate Trump.”
Following the publication of Mueller’s conclusions, then-Attorney General Bill Barr appointed Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham as special counsel to investigate the origins of “Crossfire Hurricane.” In May 2023, after years of examination, Durham released his final report, stating that the FBI lacked sufficient evidence to justify the initiation of the Trump-Russia investigation.
He also asserted that the FBI and the Department of Justice “failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law” when they launched the inquiry into Trump and Russia.
Durham pointed out that there were “clear warning signs” indicating that the FBI was a “target” of Clinton’s efforts to “manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes” leading up to the 2016 election and noted that the agency “failed to act” on these warnings.
He suggested that there was evidence indicating that the Clinton campaign aimed to associate Trump with Russia, possibly to distract from the investigation into her alleged mishandling of classified information via her use of a private email server.
Furthermore, according to Durham’s investigation, there was no follow-up on that briefing or his subsequent decision to convey the evidence to the FBI.
“The facts presented reflect a rather alarming and inexplicable failure to adequately consider and incorporate the Clinton Plan intelligence into the FBI’s decision-making process in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” stated Durham’s report.
“Indeed, had the FBI initiated the Crossfire Hurricane investigation as an assessment, and subsequently gathered and analyzed information in conjunction with the intelligence from the Clinton Plan, it is very likely that the details received would have been scrutinized, at least, with a more discerning perspective,” the report continued.
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